Be careful with where you get your information from!

We have to be increasingly more careful with where we get our information from these days. It seems that it becomes more and more difficult to be able to rely on the media, even the mainstream sources. A lot of people still believe that if something is reported in the media, it has to be true, and if it’s not reported, it’s probably not true. They fail to realize that the media is being used more and more to form public opinion instead of objectively informing the public. It’s being used to manipulate people into doing and thinking what those in control want them to do and think. This is largely being done by selectively reporting the news, reporting half truths, lies or just opinions that are not based on facts. Selectively reporting the news also means that there’s a lot of information that never reaches the public. It’s a form of censorship.

CHINESE PRESIDENT Hu Jintao said that his glorious socialist government should be using the Internet to “guide public opinion”.

He wanted to see a “healthy online culture” which was dedicated to protected the government’s stability. According to the Xinhua News Agency Hu told officials at a meeting of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo that whether China could cope with the Internet affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state.

He added that the Chinese internet regulators should “use advanced technologies to better guide public opinions” and “promote online products that can represent the grand Chinese culture.”

As if he’s not been “guiding” public opinion enough already with the help of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. In this case, “guiding” is more like manipulating. It’s the same thing the Pentagon is already doing:

The Pentagon has formally declared psychological warfare on the American people by announcing it will engage in propaganda and indoctrination by using the Internet and media to “set the record straight” on the war on terror. Recent history clearly indicates this is just the latest outreach of an insipid brainwashing agenda that is totally unlawful and anathema to the U.S. Constitution.

In the past, the military or the government did not announce that they were planting surreptitious propaganda to target U.S. audiences, they did it secretly and for a very good reason – because it was and still is illegal.

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The new program is simply another wing of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence , publicly announced after 9/11 but simply the latest incarnation of a PR brainwashing scam that spans back decades. The OSI exploited legal loopholes by planting its propaganda in foreign newspapers that would later be picked up by U.S. newswires. In today’s environment even that seems quaint, with the Pentagon openly and proudly shouting from the rooftops that they will knowingly violate the law to indoctrinate the American people.

Perhaps the most alarming case of the military’s information tentacles burrowing their influence deep into media circles in recent years was in February 2000, when another branch of the same Pentagon propaganda bureau, Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS), had placed their operatives “in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.”

FAIR speculated that the purpose was twofold, one to directly propagandize the American people via CNN and also potentially to allow the “military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself,” because the “military needed to find ways to “gain control” over commercial news satellites to help bring down an “informational cone of silence” over regions where special operations were taking place.”

With the knowledge that government propagandists were utilizing U.S. news network hubs at CNN to run what was described as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory,” and that this took place over six years ago – just imagine how infested today’s networks and newsrooms are with paid agent provocateur propagandists whose sole job specification is to orchestrate methods of mind control over the population of the United States.

In October 2005 Government Accountability Office investigators concluded that the Bush administration’s secret policy to pay off influential journalists to plant fake news and positive spin on Bush’s policies was illegal and that the “administration had disseminated “covert propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”

They’ve been doing it in Iraq too. It’s a form of mind control or manipulation. If you can control the information someone gets, you can control or manipulate his thinking and his decisions. Also check out this link.

Reviewer: White Tiger “Tiger”
Wow, this toy is great! I am eleven years old and I think you should buy this! I will write about it in the following.

First of all, this toy is PURE FUN! I love how it never gets boring because there is SO MUCH STUFF IT CAN DO! I love having it guard the hallway, and then having it tell me how many times that there was an intruder. And its walking isn’t bad at all, I use my robot on carpet and it works great for me! The only thing is walking backwards, it barely moves when it walks backwards. I give this toy 5 stars for “fun”!

This toy has a great educational value. There is so much stuff to learn and get the hang of, like what shift buttons to press and which combos to do. Also, programming it is very educational. This toy gets 5 stars for “educational value”!

For a robot, this thing is pretty durable. It is sturdy and doesn’t break when it falls or bumps into something. I gave “durability” 4 stars because of his head. His head seems to be very fragile and is knocked around easily!

Now, some things to take note of:

When (if) you purchase this toy, be sure to make sure that you have a pretty BIG ROOM for it that doesn’t have alot of LARGE OBJECTS. This is because on “free roam” mode, the robot can bump into things easily (but his sensors touch the surface and then he goes around the object).

Make sure that the room(s) you decide to use RoboSapien V2 in have exebtionally GOOD LIGHTING. In my family room, I have an overveiw light and lamps, I prefer the lamps and the robot works great with both. Just use the thing you like the most (lighting wise) and see if RSV2 works in it. You will beable to tell if he can’t because he will say “lighting to low…”

One more thing. This guy takes alot of EXPENSIVE BATTERIES. 6 D’s and 7 AAA’s. Be aware of that. He has a 4-6 hour lifespan, so batteries will be used up quite a bit.

I just told you about the cons of this toy. BUT, don’t be sad that the toy has cons because it only has THREE CONS. It has over ONE HUNDRED PROS!!!

I totally recommend this toy all in all! Enjoy!

Does that sound like an 11 year old? I have my doubts. There seem to be companies that are specialized in this kind of “marketing” and who knows how many corporations they are now working for.

From my IT background, I know that there are three important things that are needed in order for information to be useful:

It first of all has to be correct

It has to be complete

It has to be timely

The first one is pretty obvious. If information is not correct, you’re going to be making the wrong assumptions and decisions based on that information. This would be the case when you’re just being lied to and are being fed wrong information on purpose. The second one is also not hard to understand. If you get information that is not complete, even though it is correct, you’ll still be making wrong assumptions and decisions because they would be based on an incomplete understanding of things. This would be the case when you have selective news reporting and are being fed information based on a specific point of view. This information might be true, but you don’t get the other side of the story or even the complete picture of the one side, and are being manipulated into having certain opinions about things. And finally, information has to reach people on time in order for it to be useful. If people find out about things too late, they won’t be able to act on it at all, or not as effectively as they could have if they received that information on time.

It seems you have to be really careful with where you get your news and information from and have to be really paranoid about the sources. You also have to go out and look for alternative news and information as well to get the other side of the story and make sure you’re not getting a distorted view of things. Usually you would expect to be able to rely on the media to do this for you, but as you can see, that won’t happen very often anymore. It can take a lot of time to do your own research, but even if you have the time, it will still get more difficult to find certain information because of all the manipulation and censorship going on. It’s good to be aware of all of this, and I want to highly recommend visiting the links above to my previous posts on this subject.

Additional Notes

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military’s plans for “information operations” – from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.
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The declassified document is called “Information Operations Roadmap”. It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
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Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military’s psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

“Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience,” it reads.

“Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” it goes on.
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Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories – all supportive of US policy – were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon’s information operations, how they work, who they’re aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to – and the grand scale on which it’s thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel “support” the American government’s international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti – a station which broadcasts to Cuba – as receiving such support.

Who knows how many websites and bloggers are now being controlled by them. Again, be careful with where you get your information from!

The Pentagon paid a UK PR firm half a billion dollars to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq in a secret propaganda campaign exposed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
PR firm Bell Pottinger, known for its array of controversial clients including the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foundation, worked with the US military to create the propaganda in a secretive operation.
The firm reported to the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon on the project with a mandate to portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathizers.
Both the White House and General David Petraeus, the former general who shared classified information with his mistress, signed off on the content produced by the agency.
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Former employee Martin Wells told the Bureau how he found himself working in Iraq after being hired as a video editor by Bell Pottinger. Within 48 hours, he was landing in Baghdad to edit content for secret “psychological operations” at Camp Victory.
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They would craft scripts for Arabic soap operas where characters would reject terrorism with happy consequences. The firm also created fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos, which were then planted by the military in homes they raided.
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In 2009, it was reported that the Pentagon had hired controversial PR firm, The Rendon Group, to monitor the reporting of journalists embedded with the U.S. military, to assess whether they were giving “positive” coverage to its missions.

It was also revealed in 2005 that Washington based PR company the Lincoln Group had been placing articles in newspapers in Iraq which were secretly written by the US military. A Pentagon investigation cleared the group of any wrongdoing.

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.
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Essentially, the psyops idea was to play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily manipulated and controlled. But the challenges facing the Reagan administration in the 1980s led to its determination that peacetime psyops were also needed and that the target populations had to include the American public.
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As Col. Alfred R. Paddock Jr. wrote in an influential November 1983 paper, entitled “Military Psychological Operations and US Strategy,”:

“…the planned use of communications to influence attitudes or behavior should, if properly used, precede, accompany, and follow all applications of force. Put another way, psychological operations is the one weapons system which has an important role to play in peacetime, throughout the spectrum of conflict, and during the aftermath of conflict.”

Paddock continued:

“Military psychological operations are an important part of the ‘PSYOP Totality,’ both in peace and war…We need a program of psychological operations as an integral part of our national security policies and programs…The continuity of a standing interagency board or committee to provide the necessary coordinating mechanism for development of a coherent, worldwide psychological operations strategy is badly needed.”
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The role of the CIA in these initiatives was concealed but never far from the surface. A Dec. 2, 1982 note addressed to “Bud,” a reference to senior NSC official Robert “Bud” McFarlane, described a request from Raymond for a brief meeting. “When he [Raymond] returned from Langley [CIA headquarters], he had a proposed draft letter … re $100 M democ[racy] proj[ect],” the note said.
While Casey pulled the strings on this project, the CIA director instructed White House officials to hide the CIA’s hand. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”
But the formation of the National Endowment for Democracy, with its hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government money, was still months down the road. In the meantime, the Reagan administration would have to line up private donors to advance the propaganda cause.

Comments

Find your website very interesting and an eye opener, perhaps even the gateway to the world. The above article in particular “the 11 year old” I doubt it, more like a brilliant marketing team that targeted a niche’ market and knew which age group would be buying their toys!

I will look forward to any future comments and mind blowing articles that makes us ask alot of questions!